Start Where You Are

No Big Deal
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be extremely gentle. Let the whole thing be soft.
Breathing out, the instruction is to touch your breath
as it goes, to be with your breath. Let that be like re-
laxing out. Sense the breath going out into big space
and dissolving into space. You’re not trying to clutch
it, not trying to furrow your brow and catch that
breath as if you won’t be a good person unless you
grab that breath. You’re simply relaxing outward with
your breath.
Labeling our thoughts is a powerful support for
lightening up, a very helpful way to reconnect with
shunyata—this open dimension of our being, this
fresh, unbiased dimension of our mind. When we
come to that place where we say, “Thinking,” we can
just say it with an unbiased attitude and with tremen-
dous gentleness. Regard the thoughts as bubbles and
the labeling like touching them with a feather.
There’s just this light touch—”Thinking”—and they
dissolve back into the space.
Don’t worry about achieving. Don’t worry about
perfection. Just be there each moment as best you
can. When you realize you’ve wandered off again,
simply very lightly acknowledge that. This light touch
is the golden key to reuniting with our openness.
The slogan says to regard all dharmas—that is, re-
gard everything—as a dream. In this case, we could
say, “Regard all thoughts as a dream,” and just touch
them and let them go. When you notice you’re mak-
ing a really big deal, just notice that with a lot of gen-
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No Big Deal

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tleness, a lot of heart. No big deal. If the thoughts go,
and you still feel anxious and tense, you could allow
that to be there, with a lot of space around it. Just let
it be. When thoughts come up again, see them for
what they are. It’s no big deal. You can loosen up,
lighten up, whatever.
That’s the essential meaning of the absolute bod-
hichitta slogans—to connect with the open, spacious
quality of your mind, so that you can see that there’s
no need to shut down and make such a big deal about
everything. Then when you do make a big deal, you
can give that a lot of space and let it go.
In sitting practice, there’s no way you can go
wrong, wherever you find yourself. Just relax. Relax
your shoulders, relax your stomach, relax your heart,
relax your mind. Bring in as much gentleness as you
can. The technique is already quite precise. It has a
structure, it has a form. So within that form, move
with warmth and gentleness. That’s how we awaken
bodhichitta.
No Big Deal
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3
Pulling Out the Rug
A
s I s a i d b e f o r e
, the main instruction is sim-
ply to lighten up. By taking that attitude toward
one’s practice and one’s life, by taking that more gen-
tle and appreciative attitude toward oneself and oth-
ers, the sense of burden that all of us carry around
begins to decrease.
The next slogan is “Examine the nature of unborn
awareness.” The real intention of this slogan is to pull
the rug out from under you in case you think you un-
derstood the previous slogan. If you feel proud of
yourself because of how you really understood that
everything is like a dream, then this slogan is here to
challenge that smug certainty. It’s saying, “Well, who
is this anyway who thinks that they discovered that
everything is like a dream?”
“Examine the nature of unborn awareness.” Who
is this “I”? Where did it come from? Who is the one
who realizes anything? Who is it who’s aware? This
slogan points to the transparency of everything, in-
cluding our beloved identity, this precious M-E. Who
is this me?
The armor we erect around our soft hearts causes
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a lot of misery. But don’t be deceived, it’s very trans-
parent. The more vivid it gets, the more clearly you
see it, the more you realize that this shield—this co-
coon—is just made up of thoughts that we churn out
and regard as solid. The shield is not made out of
iron. The armor is not made out of metal. In fact, it’s
made out of passing memory.
The absolute quality of bodhichitta can never be
pinned down. If you can talk about it, that’s not it. So
if you think that awakened heart is something, it isn’t.
It’s passing memory. And if you think this big burden
of ego, this big monster cocoon, is something, it isn’t.
It’s just passing memory. Yet it’s so vivid. The more
you practice, the more vivid it gets. It’s a paradox—it
can’t be found, and yet it couldn’t be more vivid.
We spend a lot of time trying to nail everything
down, concretizing, just trying to make everything
solid and secure. We also spend a lot of time trying to
dull or soften or fend off that vividness. When we
awaken our hearts, we’re changing the whole pattern,
but not by creating a new pattern. We are moving fur-
ther and further away from concretizing and making
things so solid and always trying to get some ground
under our feet. This moving away from comfort and
security, this stepping out into what is unknown, un-
charted, and shaky—that’s called enlightenment, lib-
eration. Krishnamurti talks about it in his book